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It seems like each year around this time, I offer my thoughts on an HP mobile workstation and how it serves multimedia professionals. This time I am putting the HP ZBook Studio G4 through its paces. The ZBook Studio line of HP’s mobile workstations seems to fit right in the middle between ease of mobility, durability and power. The ZBook 14u and 15u are the budget series mobile workstations that run Intel i5/i7 processors with AMD FirePro graphics and top out at around $1,600. The ZBook 15 and 17 are the more powerful mobile workstations in the line with the added ability to include Intel Xeon processors, ECC memory, higher-end Nvidia Quadro graphics cards and more. But in the this review we will take the best of all models and jam them into the light and polished ZBook Studio G4.

According to the info I was sent directly from HP, the retail price is $3,510 on hp.com (US webstore). I built a very similar workstation on http://store.hp.com and was able to get the price at $3,301.65 before shipping and taxes, and $3,541.02 with taxes and free shipping. So actually pretty close.

So, besides the natural processor, memory and hard drive upgrades from previous generations, the ZBook Studio G4 has a few interesting updates, including the higher-wattage batteries with fast charge and the HP Sure Start Gen3 technology. The new fast charge is similar to the feature that some products like the GoPro Hero 5/6 cameras and Samsung Galaxy phones have, where they charge quicker than “normal.” The ZBook Studio, as well as the rest of the ZBook line, will charge 50% of your battery in around 30 minutes when in standby mode. Even when using the computer, I was able to charge the first 50% in around 30 minutes, a feature I love. After the initial 50% charge is complete, the charging will be at a normal rate, which wasn’t half bad and only took a few hours to get it to about 100%.

The battery I was sent was the larger of the two options and provided me with an eight-hour day with decent usage. When pushed using an app like Resolve I would say it lasted more like four hours. Nonetheless it lasted a while and I was happy with the result. Keep in mind the batteries are not removable, but they do have a three-year warranty, just like the rest of the mobile workstation.

When HP first told me about its Sure Start Gen 3, I thought maybe it was just a marketing gimmick, but then I experienced its power — and it’s amazing. Essentially, it is a hardware function available on only 7th generation Intel processors that allows the BIOS to repair itself upon identification of malware or corruption. While using the ZBook Studio G4, I was installing some software and had a hard crash (blue screen). I noticed when it restarted the BIOS was running through the Sure Start protocol, and within minutes I was back up and running. It was reassuring and would really set my mind at ease if deciding between a workstation-level solution or retail store computing solution.

You might be asking yourself why you should buy an enterprise-level mobile workstation when you could go buy a laptop for cheaper and almost as powerful at Best Buy or on Amazon? Technically, what really sets apart workstation components is their ability to run 24/7 and 365 days a year without downtime. This is helped by Intel Xeon processors that allow for ECC (Error Correcting Code memory), essentially bits don’t get flipped as they can with non-ECC memory. Or for laymen, like me, ECC memory prevents crashing by fixing errors itself before we see any repercussions.

Another workstation-level benefit is the environmental testing that HP runs the ZBooks through to certify their equipment as military grade, also known as MIL-810G testing. Essentially, they run multiple extreme condition tests such as high and low temperatures, salt, fog and even high-vibration testing like gunfire. Check out a more in-depth description on Wikipedia. Finally, HP prides itself on its ISV (Independent Software Vendors) verification. ISV certification means that HP spends a lot of time working with software vendors like Adobe, Avid, Autodesk and others to ensure compatibility with their products and HP’s hardware so you don’t have to. They even release certified drivers that help to ensure compatibility regularly.

In terms of warranty, HP gives you a three-year limited warranty. This includes on-site service within the Americas, and as mentioned earlier it covers the battery, which is a nice bonus. Much like other warranties it covers problems arising from faulty manufacturing, but not intentional or accidental damage. Luckily for anyone who purchases a Zbook, these systems can take a beating. Physically, the computer weighs in around 4.6lbs and is 18mm thin. It is machined aluminum that isn’t sharp, but it can start to dig into your wrists when typing for long periods. Around the exterior you get two Thunderbolt 3 ports, an HDMI port, three USB 3.1 ports (one on left and two on the right), an Ethernet port and Kensington Lock port. On the right side, you also get a power port — I would love for HP to design some sort of break-away cable like the old Magsafe cables on the MacBook Pros — and there is also a headphone/mic input.

DreamColor Display
Alright, so now I’ll go through some of the post-nerd specs that you might be looking for. Up first is the HP DreamColor display, which is a color-critical viewing solution. With a couple clicks in the Windows toolbar on the lower right you will find a colored flower — click on that and you can immediately adjust the color space you want to view your work in: AdobeRGB, sRGB, BT.709, DCI-P3 or Native. You can even calibrate or backup your own calibration for later use. While most colorists or editors use an external calibrated monitoring solution and don’t strictly rely on your viewing monitor as the color-critical source, using the DreamColor display will get you close to a color critical display without purchasing additional hardware.

In addition, DreamColor displays can play back true 24fps without frame rate conversion. One of my favorite parts of DreamColor is that if you use an external DreamColor monitor through Thunderbolt 3 (not using an SDI card), you can load your color profile onto the second or third monitor and in theory they should match. The ZBook Studio G4 seems to have been built as a perfect DIT (digital imaging technician) solution for color critical work in any weather-challenged or demanding environment without you having to worry about failure.

Speed & Testing
Now let’s talk about speed and how the system did with speed tests. When running a 24TB (6TB-4TB drives) G-Speed ShuttleXL with Thunderbolt 3 from G-Technology, I was able to get write speeds of around 1450MB/s and read speeds of 960MB/s when running the AJA System Test using a 4GB test file running RAID-0. For comparison, I ran the same test on the internal 512GB HP Z Turbo Drive, which had a write speed of 1310MB/s and read speed 1524MB/s. Of course, you need to keep in mind that the internal drive is a PCIe SSD whereas the RAID is 7200RPM drives. Finally, I ran the standard benchmarking app Cinebench R15 that comes from the makers of Maxon Cinema 4D, a 3D modeling app. For those interested, the OpenGL test ran at 138.85fps with a Ref. Match of 99.6%, CPU 470cb and CPU (Single Core) 177cb with an MP Ratio of 2.65x.

I also wanted to run the ZBook through some practical and real-world tests, and I wanted to test the rendering and exporting speeds. I chose to use Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve 14.2 software because it is widely used and an easily accessible app for many of today’s multimedia pros. For a non-scientific yet important benchmark, I needed to see how well the ZBook G4 played back R3D files (Red camera files), as well as QuickTimes with typical codecs you would find in a professional environment, such as ProRes and DNxHD. You can find a bunch of great sample R3D files on Red’s website. The R3D I chose was 16 seconds in length, shot on a Red Epic Dragon at 120fps and UHD resolution (3840×2160). To make sure I didn’t have anything skewing the results, I decided to clear all optimized media, if there was any, delete any render cache, uncheck “Use Optimized Media If Available” and uncheck “Performance Mode” just in case that did any voodoo I wasn’t aware of.

First was a playback test where I wanted to see at what decode quality I could playback in at realtime without dropping frames when I performed a slight color correction and added a power window. For this clip, I was able to get it to playback in a 23.98/1080p timeline in realtime when it was set to Half Resolution Good. At Half Resolution Premium I was dropping one or two frames. While playing back and at Full Resolution Premium, I was dropping five or six frames —playing back at around 17 or 18fps. Playing back at Half Resolution Good is actually great playback quality for such a high-quality R3D with all the head room you get when coloring a raw camera file and not a transcode. This is also when the fans inside the ZBook really kicked in. I then exported a ProRes4444 version of the same R3D clip from RedCine-X Pro with the LUT info from the camera baked in. I played the clip back in Resolve with a light color treatment and one power window with no frames dropped. When playing back the ProRes4444 file the fans stayed at a low pitch.

The second test was a simple DNxHD 10-bit export from the raw R3D. I used the DNxHD 175x codec — it took about 29 seconds, which was a little less than double realtime. I then added spatial noise reduction on my first node using the following settings: Mode: Better, Radius: Medium, Spatial Threshold (luma/chroma locked): 25. I was able to playback the timeline at around 5fps and exported the same DNxHD 175x file, but it took about 1 minute 27 seconds, about six times realtime. Doing the same DNxHD 175x export test with the ProRes4444 file, it took about 12 seconds without noise reduction and with the noise reduction about 1 minute and 16 seconds — about 4.5 times realtime. In both cases when using Noise Reduction, the fans kicked on.

Lastly, I wanted to see how Resolve would handle a simple one minute, 1080p, ProRes QuickTime in various tests. I don’t think it’s a big surprise but it played back without dropping any frames with one node of color correction, one power window and as a parallel node with a qualifier. When adding spatial noise reduction I started to get bogged down to about 6fps. The same DNxHD 175x export took about 27 seconds or a little less than half realtime. With the same spatial noise reduction as above it took about 4 minutes and 21 seconds, about 4.3 times realtime.

Summing Up
The HP ZBook Studio G4 is a lightweight and durable enterprise-level mobile workstation that packs the punch of a color-critical 4K (UHD — 3840×2160) DreamColor display, powered by an Nvidia Quadro M1200, and brought together by an Intel Xeon processor that will easily power many color, editing or other multimedia jobs. With HP’s MIL-810G certification, you have peace of mind that even with some bumps, bruises and extreme weather your workstation will work. At under 5lbs and 18mm thin with a battery that will charge 50% in 30 minutes, you can bring your professional apps like DaVinci Resolve, Adobe Premiere and Avid Media Composer anywhere and be working.

I was able to use the ZBook along with some of my Tangent Element color correction panels in a backpack and have an instant color critical DIT solution without the need for a huge cart — all capable of color correction and transcoding. The structural design of the ZBook is an incredibly sturdy, machined aluminum chassis that is lightweight enough to easily go anywhere quickly. The only criticisms are I would often miss the left click of the trackpad leaving me in a right-click scenario, the Bang & Olufsen speakers sound a little tin-like to me and, finally, it doesn’t have a touch bar… just kidding.

Brady Betzel is an Emmy-nominated online editor at Margarita Mix in Hollywood, working on Life Below Zero and Cutthroat Kitchen. You can email Brady at bradybetzel@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @allbetzroff.

Every year we get multiple updates to Red Giant’s Adobe After Effects plug-in behemoth, Trapcode Suite. The 14th update to the Trapcode suite is small but powerful and brings significant updates to Version 3 of Trapcode as well as Form (Trapcode Form 3 is a particle system generator much like Particular, but instead of the particles living and dying they stay alive forever as grids, 3D objects and other organic shapes). If you have the Trapcode Suite from a previous purchase the update will cost $199, and if you are new the suite costs $999, or $499 with an academic discount.

Particular 3 UI

There are three updates to the Suite that warrant the $199 upgrade fee: Trapcode 3, Form 3 and Tao 1.2 update. However, you still get the rest of the products with the Trapcode Suite 14: Mir 2.1, Shine 2.0, Lux 1.4, 3D Stroke 2.6, Echospace 1.1, Starglow 1.7, Sound Keys 1.1 and Horizon 1.1

First up is the Tao 1.2 update. Trapcode Tao allows you to create 3D geometric patterns along a path in After Effects. If you do a quick YouTube search of Tao you will find some amazing examples of what it can do. In the Tao 1.2 update Red Giant has added a Depth-of-Field tool to create realistic bokeh effects on your Tao objects. It’s a simple but insanely powerful update that really gives your Tao creations a sense of realism and beauty. To enable the new Depth-of-Field, wander over to the Rendering twirl-down menu under Tao and either select “off” or “Camera Settings.” It’s pretty simple. From there it is up to your After Effects camera skills and Tao artistry.

Trapcode Particular 3
Trapcode Particular is one of Red Giant’s flagship plugins and it’s easy to see why. Particular allows you to create complex particle animations within After Effects. From fire to smoke to star trails, it can pretty much do whatever your mind can come up with, and Version 3 has some powerful updates, including the overhauled Trapcode Particular Designer.

The updated designer window is very reminiscent of the Magic Bullet Designer window, easy and natural to use. Here you design your particle system, including the look, speed and overall lifespan of your system. While you can also adjust all of these parameters in the Effects Window dialog, the Designer gives an immediate visual representation of your particle systems that you can drag around and see how it interacts with movement. In addition you can see any presets that you want to use or create.

Particular 3

In Particular 3, you can now use OBJ objects as emitters. An OBJ is essentially a 3D object. You can use the OBJ’s faces, vertices, edges, and the volume inside the object to create your particle system.

The largest and most important update to the entire Trapcode Suite 14 is found within Particular 3, and it is the ability to add up to eight particle systems per instance of Particular. What does that mean? Well, your particle systems will now interact in a way that you can add details such as dust or a bright core that can carry over properties from other particle systems in the same same instance, adding the ability to create way more intricate systems than before.

Personally, the newly updated Designer is what allows me to dial in these details easily without trying to twirl down tons of menus in the Effect Editor window. A specific use of this is that you want to duplicate your system and inherit the properties, but change the blend mode and/or colors, simply you click the drop down arrow under system and click “duplicate.” Another great update within the multiple particle system update is the ability to create and load “multi-system” presets quickly and easily.

Now, with all of these particle systems mashed together you probably are wondering, “How in the world will my system be able to handle all of these when it’s hard to even playback a system in the older Trapcode Suite?” Well, lucky for us Trapcode Particular 3 is now OpenGL — GPU-accelerated and allowing for sometimes 4x speed increases. To access these options in the Designer window, click the cogwheel on the lower edge of the window towards the middle. You will find the option to render using the CPU or the GPU. There are some limitations to the GPU acceleration. For instance, when using mixed blend modes you might not be able to use certain GPU acceleration types — it will not reflect the proper blend mode that you selected. Another limitation can be with Sprites that are QuickTime movies; you may have to use the CPU mode.

Last but not least, Particular 3’s AUX system (a particle system within the main particle system) has been re-designed. You can now choose custom Sprites as well as keyframe many parameters that could not be keyframed before.

Form 3 UI

Trapcode Form 3
For clarification, Trapcode Particular can create particle emitters that emit particles that have a life, so basically they are born and they die. Trapcode Form is a particle system that does not have a life — it is not born and it does not die. Some practical examples can be a ribbon like background or a starfield. These particle systems can be made from 3D models and even be dynamically driven by an audio track. And much like Particular’s updated Designer, Form 3 has an updated designer that will help you build you particle array quickly and easily. Once done inside the Designer you can hop out and adjust parameters in the Effects Panel. If you want to use pre-built objects or images as your particles you can load those as Sprites or Textured Polygons and animate their movement.

Another really handy update in Trapcode Form 3 is the addition of the Graphing System. This allows you to animate controls like color, size, opacity and dispersion over time.

Just like Particular, Form reacts to After Effect’s cameras and lights, completely immersing them into any scene that you’ve built. For someone like me, who loves After Effects and the beauty of creations from Form and Particular but who doesn’t necessarily have the time to create from scratch, there is a library of over 70 pre-built elements. Finally, Form has added a new rendering option called Shadowlet rendering which adds light falloff to your particle grid or array.

Form 3

Summing Up
In the end, the Trapcode Suite 14 has significantly updated Trapcode Particular 3 with multiple particle systems, Trapcode Form 3 with a beautiful new Designer, and Trapcode Tao with Depth-of-Field, all for an upgrade price of $199. Some Trapcode Particular users have been asking for the ability to build and manipulate multiple particle systems together, and Red Giant has answered their wishes.

If you’ve never used the Trapcode Suite you should also check out the rest of the mega-bundle which includes apps like Shine, 3D Stroke, Starglow, MIr, Lux, Sound Keys, Horizon and Echospace here. And if you want to get more in-depth rundowns of each of these programs check out Harry Frank’s (@graymachine) and Chad Perkin’s tutorials on the Red Giant News website. Then immediately follow @trapcode_lab and @RedGiantNews on Twitter.

Brady Betzel is an Emmy-nominated online editor at Margarita Mix in Hollywood, working on Life Below Zero and Cutthroat Kitchen. You can email Brady at bradybetzel@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @allbetzroff.

I finally got the opportunity to try out the GoPro Fusion camera I have had my eye on since the company first revealed it in April. The $700 camera uses two offset fish-eye lenses to shoot 360 video and stills, while recording ambisonic audio from four microphones in the waterproof unit. It can shoot a 5K video sphere at 30fps, or a 3K sphere at 60fps for higher motion content at reduced resolution. It records dual 190-degree fish-eye perspectives encoded in H.264 to separate MicroSD cards, with four tracks of audio. The rest of the magic comes in the form of GoPro’s newest application Fusion Studio.

Internally, the unit is recording dual 45Mb H.264 files to two separate MicroSD cards, with accompanying audio and metadata assets. This would be a logistical challenge to deal with manually, copying the cards into folders, sorting and syncing them, stitching them together and dealing with the audio. But with GoPro’s new Fusion Studio app, most of this is taken care of for you. Simply plug-in the camera and it will automatically access the footage, and let you preview and select what parts of which clips you want processed into stitched 360 footage or flattened video files.

It also processes the multi-channel audio into ambisonic B-Format tracks, or standard stereo if desired. The app is a bit limited in user-control functionality, but what it does do it does very well. My main complaint is that I can’t find a way to manually set the output filename, but I can rename the exports in Windows once they have been rendered. Trying to process the same source file into multiple outputs is challenging for the same reason.

Setting

Recorded Resolution (Per Lens)

Processed Resolution (Equirectangular)

5Kp30

2704×2624

4992×2496

3Kp60

1568×1504

2880×1440

Stills

3104×3000

5760×2880

With the Samsung Gear 360, I researched five different ways to stitch the footage, because I wasn’t satisfied with the included app. Most of those will also work with Fusion footage, and you can read about those options here, but they aren’t really necessary when you have Fusion Studio.

You can choose between H.264, Cineform or ProRes, your equirectangular output resolution and ambisonic or stereo audio. That gives you pretty much every option you should need to process your footage. There is also a “Beta” option to stabilize your footage, which once I got used to it, I really liked. It should be thought of more as a “remove rotation” option since it’s not for stabilizing out sharp motions — which still leave motion blur — but for maintaining the viewer’s perspective even if the camera rotates in unexpected ways. Processing was about 6x run-time on my Lenovo Thinkpad P71 laptop, so a 10-minute clip would take an hour to stitch to 360.

The footage itself looks good, higher quality than my Gear 360, and the 60p stuff is much smoother, which is to be expected. While good VR experiences require 90fps to be rendered to the display to avoid motion sickness that does not necessarily mean that 30fps content is a problem. When rendering the viewer’s perspective, the same frame can be sampled three times, shifting the image as they move their head, even from a single source frame. That said, 60p source content does give smoother results than the 30p footage I am used to watching in VR, but 60p did give me more issues during editorial. I had to disable CUDA acceleration in Adobe Premiere Pro to get Transmit to work with the WMR headset.

Once you have your footage processed in Fusion Studio, it can be edited in Premiere Pro — like any other 360 footage — but the audio can be handled a bit differently. Exporting as stereo will follow the usual workflow, but selecting ambisonic will give you a special spatially aware audio file. Premiere can use this in a 4-track multi-channel sequence to line up the spatial audio with the direction you are looking in VR, and if exported correctly, YouTube can do the same thing for your viewers.

In the Trees
Most GoPro products are intended for use capturing action moments and unusual situations in extreme environments (which is why they are waterproof and fairly resilient), so I wanted to study the camera in its “native habitat.” The most extreme thing I do these days is work on ropes courses, high up in trees or telephone poles. So I took the camera out to a ropes course that I help out with, curious to see how the recording at height would translate into the 360 video experience.

Ropes courses are usually challenging to photograph because of the scale involved. When you are zoomed out far enough to see the entire element, you can’t see any detail, or if you are so zoomed in close enough to see faces, you have no good concept of how high up they are — 360 photography is helpful in that it is designed to be panned through when viewed flat. This allows you to give the viewer a better sense of the scale, and they can still see the details of the individual elements or people climbing. And in VR, you should have a better feel for the height involved.

I had the Fusion camera and Fusion Grip extendable tripod handle, as well as my Hero6 kit, which included an adhesive helmet mount. Since I was going to be working at heights and didn’t want to drop the camera, the first thing I did was rig up a tether system. A short piece of 2mm cord fit through a slot in the bottom of the center post and a triple fisherman knot made a secure loop. The cord fit out the bottom of the tripod when it was closed, allowing me to connect it to a shock-absorbing lanyard, which was clipped to my harness. This also allowed me to dangle the camera from a cord for a free-floating perspective. I also stuck the quick release base to my climbing helmet, and was ready to go.

I shot segments in both 30p and 60p, depending on how I had the camera mounted, using higher frame rates for the more dynamic shots. I was worried that the helmet mount would be too close, since GoPro recommends keeping the Fusion at least 20cm away from what it is filming, but the helmet wasn’t too bad. Another inch or two would shrink it significantly from the camera’s perspective, similar to my tripod issue with the Gear 360.

I always climbed up with the camera mounted on my helmet and then switched it to the Fusion Grip to record the guy climbing up behind me and my rappel. Hanging the camera from a cord, even 30-feet below me, worked much better than I expected. It put GoPro’s stabilization feature to the test, but it worked fantastically. With the camera rotating freely, the perspective is static, although you can see the seam lines constantly rotating around you. When I am holding the Fusion Grip, the extended pole is completely invisible to the camera, giving you what GoPro has dubbed “Angel View.” It is as if the viewer is floating freely next to the subject, especially when viewed in VR.

Because I have ways to view 360 video in VR, and because I don’t mind panning around on a flat screen view, I am less excited personally in GoPro’s OverCapture functionality, but I recognize it is a useful feature that will greater extend the use cases for this 360 camera. It is designed for people using the Fusion as a more flexible camera to produce flat content, instead of to produce VR content. I edited together a couple OverCapture shots intercut with footage from my regular Hero6 to demonstrate how that would work.

Ambisonic Audio
The other new option that Fusion brings to the table is ambisonic audio. Editing ambisonics works in Premiere Pro using a 4-track multi-channel sequence. The main workflow kink here is that you have to manually override the audio settings every time you import a new clip with ambisonic audio in order to set the audio channels to Adaptive with a single timeline clip. Turn on Monitor Ambisonics by right clicking in the monitor panel and match the Pan, Tilt, and Roll in the Panner-Ambisonics effect to the values in your VR Rotate Sphere effect (note that they are listed in a different order) and your audio should match the video perspective.

When exporting an MP4 in the audio panel, set Channels to 4.0 and check the Audio is Ambisonics box. From what I can see, the Fusion Studio conversion process compensates for changes in perspective, including “stabilization” when processing the raw recorded audio for Ambisonic exports, so you only have to match changes you make in your Premiere sequence.

While I could have intercut the footage at both settings together into a 5Kp60 timeline, I ended up creating two separate 360 videos. This also makes it clear to the viewer which shots were 5K/p30 and which were recorded at 3K/p60. They are both available on YouTube, and I recommend watching them in VR for the full effect. But be warned that they are recorded at heights up to 80 feet up, so it may be uncomfortable for some people to watch.

Summing Up
GoPro’s Fusion camera is not the first 360 camera on the market, but it brings more pixels and higher frame rates than most of its direct competitors, and more importantly it has the software package to assist users in the transition to processing 360 video footage. It also supports ambisonic audio and offers the OverCapture functionality for generating more traditional flat GoPro content.

I found it to be easier to mount and shoot with than my earlier 360 camera experiences, and it is far easier to get the footage ready to edit and view using GoPro’s Fusion Studio program. The Stabilize feature totally changes how I shoot 360 videos, giving me much more flexibility in rotating the camera during movements. And most importantly, I am much happier with the resulting footage that I get when shooting with it.

Mike McCarthy is an online editor/workflow consultant with 10 years of experience on feature films and commercials. He has been involved in pioneering new solutions for tapeless workflows, DSLR filmmaking and multi-screen and surround video experiences. Check out his site.

The professional workstation market has been blown open recently with companies like HP, Apple, Dell, Lenovo and others building systems containing i3/i5/i7/i9 and Xeon processors, and AMD’s recent re-inauguration into the professional workstation market with their Ryzen line of processors.

There are more options than ever, and that’s a great thing for working pros, but for this review, I’m going to take a look at Boxx Technologies Apexx 4 7404, which the company sent me to run through its paces over a few months, and it blew me away.

On the front of the workstation, you get two USB 3.0, two USB 2.0, audio out/mic in, and on the rear of the 7404 there are eight USB 3.0, two USB 3.1, two Gigabit Ethernet, audio out/mic in, line in, one S/PDIF out and two eSATA. Depending on the video card(s) you choose, you will have some more fun options.

This system came with a DVD-RW drive, which is a little funny these days but I suppose still necessary for some people. If you need more parts or drives there is plenty of room for all that you could ever want, both inside and out. While these are just a few of the specs, they really are the most important, in my opinion. If you purchase from Boxx all of these can be customized. Check out all of the different Boxx Apexx 4 flavors here.

Specs
Right off the bat you will notice the Intel i7-6950X CPU, which is a monster of a processor and retails for around $1,500, just by itself. With its hefty price tag, this Intel i7 lends itself to niche use cases like multimedia processing. Luckily for me (and you), that is exactly what I do. One of the key differences between a system like the Boxx workstation and ones from companies like HP is that Boxx takes advantage of the X or K series Intel processors and overclocks them, getting the most from your processors all while still being backed by Boxx’s three-year warranty. The 7404 has one core overclocked to 4.3GHz which can sometimes provide a speed increase for apps that don’t use multiple cores. While this isn’t a lot of cases it doesn’t hurt to have that extra boost.

When building your own system you might pick a case because the price is right or it is all that is available for your components (or that is what pcpartpicker.com tells you that is what fits). This can mean giving up build quality and potentially bad airflow. Boxx knows this and has gone beyond just purchasing other companies cases — they forge their own workstation case masterpieces.

Boxx’s support is based in Austin – no outsourcing — and their staff knows the apps we use such as Autodesk, Adobe and others.

Through Its Paces
I tested the Apexx 4 7404 using Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe Media Encoder since they are really the Swiss Army knives of the multimedia content creation world. I edited together a 10-minute UHD (3840×2160) sequence using an XAVC MP4 I shot using a Sony a6300. I did a little color correction with the Lumetri Color tools, scaled the image up to 110% and exported the file through Media Encoder. I exported it as a 10-bit DNxHQX, UHD, QuickTime MOV.

It took seven minutes and 40 seconds to export to the OS drive (Intel) and about six minutes and 50 seconds to go to the internal storage drive (Samsung). Once I hit export I finally got the engines to rev up inside of the Boxx, the GPU fans seemed to kick on a little; they weren’t loud but you could hear a light breeze start up. On my way out of Premiere I exported an XML to give me a headstart in Resolve for my next test.

My next test was to import my Premiere XML into Blackmagic’s Resolve 14 Studio and export with essentially the same edits, reproduce the color correction, and apply the same scaling. It took a few minutes to get Resolve 14 up and running, but after doing a few uninstalls, installing Resolve 12.5.6 and updating my Nvidia drivers, Resolve 14 was up and running. While this isn’t a Boxx problem, I did encounter this during my testing so I figured someone might run into the same issue, so I wanted to mention it.

I then imported my XML, applied a little color correction, and double checked that my 110% scaling came over in the XML (which it did), and exported using the same DNxHQX settings that I used in Premiere. Exporting from Resolve 14 to the OS drive took about six minutes and 15 seconds, running at about 41 frames per second. When exporting to the internal storage drive it took about six minutes and 11 seconds, running between 40-42 frames per second. For those keeping track of testing details, I did not cache any of the QuickTimes and turned Performance Mode off for these tests (in case Blackmagic had any sneaky things going on in that setting).

After this, I went a little further and exported the same sequence with some Spatial Noise Reduction set across the entire 10-minute timeline using these settings: Mode: Better; Radius: Medium; Spatial Threshold: 15 on both Luma and Chroma; and Blend: 0. It ran at about nine frames per second and took about 25 minutes and 25 seconds to export.

Testing
Finally, I ran a few tests to get some geeky nerd specs that you can compare to other users’ experiences to see where this Boxx Apexx 4 7404 stands. Up first was the AJA System Test, which tests read and write speeds to designated disks. In addition, you can specify different codecs and file sizes to base this test off of. I told the AJA System Test to run its test using the 10-bit Avid DNxHQX codec, 16GB file size and UHD frame size (3860×2140). I ran it a few times, but the average was around 2100/2680 MB/sec write and read to the OS drive and 1000/1890 MB/sec write and read to the storage drive.

To get a sense of how this system would hold up to a 3D modeling test, I ran the classic Cinebench R15 app. OpenGL was 215.34 frames per second with 99.6% ref. match, CPU scored 2121cb and CPU (single core) cored 181cb with MP Ratio of 11.73x. What the test really showed me when I Googled Cinebench scores to compare mine to was that the Boxx Apexx 4 7404 was in the top of the heap for all categories. Specifically, within the top 20 for overall render speed being beaten only by systems with more cores and placed in the top 15 for single core speed — the OpenGL fps is pretty incredible at over 215fps.

Summing Up
In the end, the Boxx Apexx 4 7404 custom-built workstation is an incredible powerhouse for any multimedia workflow. From rendering to exporting to transcoding, the Boxx Apexx 4 7404 with dual Nvidia Quadro P5000s will chew through anything you throw at it.

But with this power comes a big price: the 7404 series starts at $7,246! The price of the one I tested lands much higher north though, more like just under $14,000 — those pesky Quadros bump the price up quite a bit. But if rendering, color correcting, editing and/or transcoding is your business, Boxx will make sure you are up and running and chewing through every gigabyte of video and 3D modeling you can run through it.

If you have any problems and are not up and running, their support will get you going as fast as possible. If you need parts replaced they will get that to you fast. Boxx’s three-year warranty, which is included with your purchase, includes getting next day on-site repair for the first year but this is a paid upgrade if you want it to continue for years two and three of your warranty. But don’t worry. If you don’t upgrade your warranty you still have two years of great support.

In my opinion, you should really plan for the extended on-site repair upgrade for all three years of your warranty — you will save time, which will make you more money. If you can afford a custom-built Boxx system, you will get a powerhouse workstation that makes working in apps like Premiere and Resolve 14 snappy and fluid.

Brady Betzel is an Emmy-nominated online editor at Margarita Mix in Hollywood, working on Life Below Zero and Cutthroat Kitchen. You can email Brady at bradybetzel@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @allbetzroff.

In my recent Red Giant Trapcode Suite 13 for After Effects review, Part 1, I touched on updates to Particular, Shine, Lux and Starglow. In this installment, I am going to blaze through the remaining seven plug-ins that make up the Trapcode Suite. Those include Form, Mir, Tao, 3D Stroke, Echospace, Sound Keys and Horizon. While Particular is the most well-known plug-in in the Suite, the following seven all are incredibly useful and can help make you money.

Form 2.1
Trapcode Form 2.1 is best described as a particle system, much like Particular, but with particles that live forever and are used in forms like cubes. If you’ve used Element 3D by Video CoPilot you probably know that you can load objects from Maxon Cinema 4D into your Adobe After Effects projects pretty easily and, for all intents and purposes, quickly. Form allows you to load these 3D OBJ files and alter them inside of After Effects.

When you load the OBJ file, Form applies particles at each vertices point. The more vertices you have in your 3D object, the more detail you will have in your Form. It is really a cool way to create a techy kind of look for a HUD (heads up display) or sweet motion graphics piece that needs that futuristic pointillism type look. The original function of Form was to create particle grids that could be exploded or tightly wound and that would live on forever, as opposed to Particular, which creates particle systems with a birth and a death.

Form 2.1

A simple way to think of how Form works is to imagine the ability to take simple text and transform it into “particles” to create a sandy explosion or turn everyday objects into particles that live forever. From Grids to Strings and Spheres to Sprites, with enough practice you can create some of the most stunning backgrounds or motion graphics wizardry inside of Trapcode Form, all of which is affected by After Effect lights and cameras in 3D space.

I was really surprised at how powerful and smooth Trapcode Form can run. I am running a tablet with an Intel i7 processor and I was able to get very reasonable performance, even with my camera depth-of-field turned on.

Mir 2.0
Trapcode Mir is an extremely useful plug-in for those wanting to create futuristic terrains or modern triangulated environments with tunnels and valleys. Mir is versatile and can go from creating smooth ocean floors to spiky mountain tops to extreme wireframe structures. Some of the newest updates in Mir 2.0 are the ability to add a spiral to the Mir landscape mesh you create (think galaxy); seamless looping under the fractal menu; ability to choose between triangles and quads for your surfaces; the really cool ability to add a second pass wireframe on top of your surface for that futuristic grid look; texture sampling from smooth gradients to solid colors; control of the maximums and minimums under z-range (basically allows for easier peaks and valleys); multi-, smoothridge, multi-smoothridge and regular fractals for differing displacements on your textures; and improved VRAM management for speedy processing.

Mir 2.0

These days GIFs are all the rage, so I am really impressed with the seamless loop option. It might seem ridiculous but if you’ve seen what is popular on social media you will know it’s emojis and GIFs. If you want to prep your seamless loop, check out this quick video from Trapcode creator Peder Norrby (@trapcode_lab).

Simply, you create beginning and end keyframes, find the seamless loop options under the Fractal category, step back one frame from your end loop point, mark your end-of-work area, go to the loop point (which should be one frame past where you marked the end to your work area) and click Set End Keyframe. From there Trapcode Mir will fill in the rest of the details and create your seamless loop ready to be exported as a GIF and blasted on Twitter. It’s really that easy.

If you are looking for an animated GIF export setting, try exporting through Adobe Media Encoder and searching “GIF” in the presets. You will find an “Animated GIF” preset, which I resized to something more appropriate like 1280×720 but that still came out at 49MB — way over the 5MB Twitter upload limit. I tried a few times, first with 50% quality at 640×360, which got me to 13.7MB. I even changed the quality down to 5% in Media Encoder, but I kept getting 13.7MB until I brought the size down to 320×180. That got me just under 4MB, which is perfect! If you do a lot of GIF work, an easy way to compress them is to use http://ezgif.com/optimize and to fiddle with their optimization settings to get under 5MB. It’s quick and it all lives online.

As with all Trapcode Suite plug-ins (or anything for that matter), the only way to get good is to experiment and allow yourself to fail or succeed. This holds true for Mir. I was making garbage one minute and with a couple changes I made some motion graphics that made me see the potential of the plug-in and how I could actually make content that people would be blown away with.

3D Stroke

3D Stroke
One plug-in that isn’t new but will lead into the next one is Trapcode 3D Stroke. 3D Stroke takes the built-in After Effects plug-in Stroke to a new level. Traditional Stroke is an 8-bit plug-in while Trapcode 3D Stroke can run on the color-burning 32-bits-per-channel mode. If you want to add a stroke along a path that interacts with your comp cameras in 3D space, Trapcode 3D Stroke is what you want. From creating masks of your text and applying a sweet 3D Stroke to them to intricate 3D paths that zoom in between objects with a HDR-like glow, 3D Stroke is one of those tools to have in your After Effects tool box.

When using it I really fell in love with the repeater. Much like Element 3D’s particle arrays, the repeater can create multiple instances of your paths or text paths to create some interesting and infinitely adjustable objects.

Tao
Trapcode Tao is new to the Trapcode Suite of plug-ins. Tao gives us the ability to create 3D geometry along a path, and boy did people immediately fall in love with this tool when it was released. You can find tons of examples and tutorials of Tao from experts like VinhSon Nguyen, better known as @CreativeDojo on Twitter. Check out his tutorial on Vimeo, too. Tao is a tricky beast, and one way I learned about it in-depth was to download Peder Norrby’s project files over at http://www.trapcode.com and dissect them as best I could.

Tao

If you remember Trapcode 3D Stroke from earlier, you know that it allows us to create awesome glows and strokes along paths in 3D space. Trapcode Tao operates in much the same way as 3D Stroke except that it uses particles like Mir to create organic flowing forms in 3D space that interact with After Effects’ cameras and lights.

Trapcode Tao is about as close as you can get to modeling 3D geometry inside of After Effects at realtime speeds with image-based lighting. The only other way to achieve this is with Video CoPilot’s Element 3D or by using Cinema 4D via Cineware, which is sometimes a painstaking process.

Horizon 1.1
Another product that I was surprised by was Trapcode Horizon 1.1. In the age of virtual reality and 360 video you can never have too many ways to make your own worlds to pan cameras around in. With a quick Spherical Map search on Google, I found all the equi-rectangular maps I could handle. Once inside of After Effects, you need to import and resize your map to your comp size, add a new solid and camera, throw Horizon on top of your solid, under Image Map > Layer, choose the layer name containing your spherical image, and BAM! You have a 360-world. You can then add elements like Trapcode Particular, 3D Stroke or Tao and pan and zoom around to make some pretty great opening titles or even make your own B-Roll!

Echospace 1.1

Echospace 1.1
Trapcode Echospace 1.1 is a powerful section in the Trapcode Suite 13 plug-in library. It is one of those plug-ins where you watch the tutorials and wonder why people don’t talk about it more. In simple terms, Echospace replicates layers and creates interdependent parenting links to the original layer, allowing you to create complex repeated element animations and layouts. In essence it feels more like a complex script as opposed to a plug-in.

Sound Keys 1.3
The last plug-in in the massive Trapcode Suite v13 library is Sound Keys 1.3. Sound Keys analyzes audio files and can draw keyframes based on their rhythm. One reason I left this until the end of my review is that you can attach any of the parameters from the other Trapcode Suite 13 plug-ins to the outputs of the Sound Keys 1.3 keyframes via a pick whip. If I just lost you by saying pick whip, snap back into it.

If you learn one thing in the After Effects scripting world, it’s that you can attach one parameter to another by alt+clicking (command+clicking) on the stopwatch of the parameter that you want to be driven by another parameter and dragging the curly-looking icon over the other parameter. So in the Sound Keys case, you can attach the scale of an object to the rhythm of a bass drum.

Sound Keys 1.3

What I really liked about Sound Keys is that it not only can create a dynamically driven piece of motion graphics, but you can also use the audio meters it draws to visualize the audio. You see this a lot in lyric music videos or YouTube videos that are playing music only but still want a touch of visual flare, and with Sound Keys 1.3 you can change the visual representation of the audio including color, quantization (little dots that you see on audio meters) and size.

Easily isolate an audio frequency with the onscreen controls, find the effect you want to drive by the audio, and pick whip your way to dynamic motion graphic. If I was the graphics designer I wish I was, I would take Sound Keys and something like Particular or Tao and create some stunning work. I bet I could even make some money making some lyric videos… one day.

Summing Up
In the end, the Trapcode Suite v13 is an epic and monumental release. The total cost as a package is $999, and while it is a significantly higher cost than After Effects, let me tell you: it has the ability to make you way more money with some time and effort. Even with just an hour or so a day I feel like my Trapcode game would go to the next level.

For those that have the Trapcode Suite and want to upgrade for $199, there are some huge benefits to the v13 update including Trapcode Tao, GPU performance upgrades across the board, and even things like the second pass wireframe for Mir.

If you are a student, you can grab Trapcode Suite 13 for $499 with a little verification legwork. If you are worried about your system working efficiently with the Trapcode Suite you can check the technical requirements here, but I was working on an Intel i7 tablet with 8GB of memory and Intel Iris 6100 graphics processor. I found everything to be very speedy for the limitations I had. Tao was the only plug-in that wouldn’t display correctly, but rightly so, as you can read the GPU requirements here.

If I was you and had a cool $999 burning a hole in my After Effects wallet I would pick up Trapcode Suite 13 immediately.

Brady Betzel is an online editor at Margarita Mix in Hollywood, working on Life Below Zero and Cutthroat Kitchen. You can email Brady at bradybetzel@gmail.com, and follow him on Twitter @allbetzroff. Earlier this year, Brady was nominated for an Emmy for his work on Disney’s Unforgettable Christmas Celebration.

In 1990, I was working at a music studio where I did a lot of cut downs of 60s, 30s, 15s and 10s for TV and radio commercials. Back then we used ¼-inch analog tape with a razor blade to physically cut the tape. Since I did so many ¼-inch tape edits, the studio manager was forward thinking enough to introduce a new 2-track digital editing system by Digidesign called Sound Tools. I took to it like a fish takes to water since I was already using computers, MIDI sequencers and drum machines — even replacing chips in drum machines — which is fitting since that is how Peter Gotcher and Evan Brooks started Digidesign back in 1984. (See my History of Audio Post here.)

A short time later, Pro Tools was introduced and everyone at the studio thought it was simply an upgrade to Sound Tools but with a different name. We purchased the first available version of Pro Tools and launched the new version to discover that there were now 4 audio tracks instead of 2. My first thought was, “Oh no, what am I going to do with the 2 extra tracks?!” Fearing the worst, my second thought was, “Oh shit, I bet this thing no longer does crossfades and I will have to use those two extra tracks to “ping pong” from one set of tracks to the other for fades.” Thankfully, I quickly realized that not only could Pro Tools 1.0 do crossfades, but it could do a lot more, including revolutionizing the entire audio industry.

During my long history of working on Sound Tools and Pro Tools, I have seen all of the advancements with the software firsthand. I am pleased to say that Avid’s latest version of Pro Tools, 12.3 includes some of the most helpful improvements yet.

Offerings and Pricing Options
Avid now offers its most flexible pricing ever for Pro Tools 12 — there are three different ways to purchase or upgrade. Just like before, Pro Tools can be purchased or upgraded outright, which is called a perpetual license. Don’t let the word license scare you; it still is a one-time purchase. In addition to the perpetual license, there are two new ways to lease Pro Tools either on a monthly basis or an annual subscription basis. This is an interesting step for Avid. The advantage to both types of subscriptions is that the user is eligible for all of the upgrades and tech support included with their subscription. This is an excellent way to ensure your program is always up to date while bug fixes are made along the way.

Offering such pricing flexibility does create a bit of confusion regarding what pricing options are available, since there are three versions of Pro Tools combined with the difference between first-time purchasers verses upgrades for preexisting users.

The first available option is called Pro Tools First, which is a free version. As a free version, this is an ideal option for anyone who is looking to get on board with Pro Tools for the first time. However, to take full advantage of Pro Tools 12, which is listed here in my review, you would need to purchase one of the two main versions, Pro Tools 12 or Pro Tools|HD 12.

Pricing can vary according to your situation if you own previous versions or you have let too much time lapse in between upgrades. Suffice it to say, that whatever your unique situation is there is a purchase plan for you.

What’s Not New
The one thing product reviews rarely, if ever, cover is what has not changed. To me, what hasn’t changed is the first thing I want to know when I am working with any new version of existing software. I cannot stress enough the importance of being able to quickly and easily pick up exactly where I left off from my old version after upgrading. Unfortunately I know how often the software’s new features can make my old way of working obsolete.

I can’t help but think of a notable recent example when the upgrade to FCP X no longer supported OMF for audio exports. What were they thinking? Keeping previous workflows intact is an extremely important issue to me. Immediately after my upgrade from Pro Tools 10 to Pro Tools HD|12, I launched a session and it worked exactly as it did in version 10, eliminating any downtime for me.

One thing that is not new, but is extremely important to mention is the switch from the original Digidesign Audio Engine to the Avid Audio Engine. This happened on Pro Tools 11. Even with the change to the Avid Audio Engine, I was not forced to abandon my old workflow. The advantage of the Avid Audio Engine is key — among other things, this is what allows for the long overdue offline bounce, or faster-than-realtime bounce. And for anyone who is still on Pro Tools 10 and below, the offline bounce is a major reason to move to Pro Tools 12.

Because everyone uses Pro Tools in so many different and complex ways, I encourage you to view Avid’s website www.avid.com for a list of all of the new and improved functions. There are too many new features and improvements to list each one in this review. That is why I came up with a list of my 12 favorite new features of Pro Tools|HD 12.

My 12 Favorite New Features of Pro Tools 12
1. Avid Application Manager. There is a new icon at the top of your screen called the Avid Application Manager. Clicking on it will launch a window allowing you to log into your account, keep up with any updates and view a list of any uninstalled plug-ins available, along with your support options. You can also verify what type of license you have and when it was activated. This is helpful if you have the month-to-month or annual subscription so you can see when your next renewal is. Even with the perpetual license, you can still see what upgrades and bug fixes are available at any time.

2. Buy or Rent Plug-ins. One very cool new feature is the option to buy or rent any plug-in from a new menu option directly in Pro Tools called The Marketplace. This is particularly useful if you are opening another person’s session that has used a plug-in you do not own or if you are opening your session at a studio where they do not own a particular plug-in that you have at your studio. The rent option is a great way to access any missing plug-ins without having to commit to them fully.

3. Pitch Shift Legacy. Call me crazy, but I am thrilled that Avid has included the original version of Pitch Shift in the audio suite. In Pro Tools 11, Pitch Shift was changed to a piano keyboard-based plug-in called Pitch 2. As cool as it is to base your work off of a piano keyboard used in Pitch 2, I missed some of the basic features found only in the original version. I am pleased to say that Avid now offers both versions of Pitch Shift in the audio suite — the new piano-based keyboard version and the original, now called Pitch Shift Legacy.

4. Track Commit. Track Commit is used for converting virtual instruments to audio files, and it can be used for saving processing power overall. Even if you do not use virtual instruments, it still can be a very useful function, offering you the option to “print” your plug-ins to the audio track. This is a great way of saving processing and plug-in power. You can also render your automation, including panning. All of this saves processing power and any possible confusion if someone else is working on your session down the line.

5. Clip Transparency. Some people may remember the days of ¼-inch tape editing that I mentioned at the start of this article. Back then, audio editing had to be done solely with your ears. When Sound Tools and Pro Tools came along, editing became a visual skill, too. Clip Transparency takes visual editing one step further. It allows you to see two clips superimposed over each other while moving them on the same audio track. This is ideal for anyone who needs to line up a new clip with the old clip like when doing ADR.

The best part is it’s not only for seeing two different clips overlaid at the same time; it can be used when you are moving a single region or clip along your audio track. Clip Transparency allows you to see the old position superimposed with the new position of the same clip while you are shifting it for comparison.

It is perfect for those countless times when I have zoomed in past the start of the clip and I can’t see how much I am moving the clip relative to the old position. Clip Transparency now allows me to see how much I am shifting the audio, no matter what my zoom setting is. I never knew how much I needed this feature until I saw it in action. Clip Transparency is by far my most favorite new feature of Pro Tools 12.

6. Batch Fade and Fade Presets. When you are working with multiple audio clips on your timeline, fading each of the clips can be time consuming, especially if each fade needs to be treated differently. Now with Batch Fade, you can create presets for fade-ins, fade-outs and crossfades. When multiple audio clips are selected, a much larger dialog window pops up with many more options for you to choose from. Of course, fading between two clips can still be done the old way, and the fade dialog box works the same as in pervious versions. The new Batch Fade is an additional function that allows you to be more selective and have more options for your fades. Batch Fade is a great example how your old workflow is preserved while still adding new features.

7. The Dashboard. Launching a session now includes the Dashboard window at the start, which is an updated version of the Quick Start menu. You can quickly and easily see all of the available templates and your recent sessions. And, of course, you can create a new blank session. I like the new look and feel of Dashboard compared to Quick Start.

8. iPad Control. Pro Tools l Control is a free app now available in the App Store. iPad Control is made possible with the introduction of EuControl v.3.3, which is the driver needed for your workstation. EuControl is a free download using your Avid account after you complete the registration in the Pro Tools l Control iOS app. Even though I do not own an iPad, I can see the advantage of controlling Pro Tools via the iPad when I am monitoring a mix from a distance from my DAW.

Mixing a film, for example, would be a great use of the iPad control since that would allow me to sit back farther away from the speakers, thus simulating the distance of the listener in a movie theater. Today, the line between phones and tablets is blurred with the introduction of the “phablet.” As it stands now, the app is only available for iPad. I suspect that will change in the future, but I have no confirmation of that.

9. Included virtual musical instruments. The latest versions of Xpand II and First AIR Instruments Bundle are included with Pro Tools 12. Quite simply, I am blown away with how amazing these instruments sound. I have been a musician all of my life, but surprisingly I have never used any virtual instruments in MIDI in Pro Tools. I have always opted for a dedicated composing program for MIDI dating way back to Studio Vision Pro (for those of you old enough to remember how cool that program was).

I know there are plenty of third-party virtual instruments available for Pro Tools, but these two instrument bundles included with Pro Tools 12 have really opened up my eyes. Before Pro Tools 12, I found myself sharing and swapping files between a MIDI program (for me it’s Apple Logic) and Pro Tools. I have always preferred using a dedicated program for MIDI outside of Pro Tools, but now I am instantly converting using only Pro Tools for MIDI with the addition of these versions of Xpand II and the First AIR Instruments Bundle.

Please visit Avid’s website for a list of the specifics, but some of my favorite virtual instruments are the acoustic pianos, synth basses and of course anything drums or percussion related.

10. Updated I/O and flexibility. I work mostly on TV commercials and media specifically for the web, so I am rarely asked to do surround sound mixing, especially anything in 7.1. Therefore I am not able to explore any of the new surround features, including the new templates for 7.1 mixing.

Even so, I still can mention the addition of the Default Monitor path in Pro Tools 12. Pro Tools will automatically downmix or upmix your sessions’ monitor path to the studio’s monitor path. For example, if an HD session is saved with a 5.1 monitor path and then opened on a system that only has a stereo monitor path available, the session’s 5.1 monitor path is automatically downmixed to the systems’ stereo monitor outputs. This makes for even more flexibility when swapping sessions from one studio to another regardless of whether or not there are surround sound monitoring capabilities.

Another improvement relating to the I/O and surround capabilities is the addition of virtually unlimited busses. This will help anyone who has used up or exceeded previously allowed bus limitations when mixing in surround. The new Commit feature supports multichannel set-ups, which can improve your surround workflow.

And for any of the larger audio post facilities that may use Pro Tools in a much more complex way, such as getting several edit rooms to integrate, sync and play together, there are improvements in the Satellite link workflow. This includes the reset network button, transmit and receive play selection buttons in the transport window.

11. Track Bounce. Track Bounce is another feature I didn’t know I needed that much until I started using it. It is not to be confused with Track Commit. Track Bounce gives you the ability to select and bounce tracks or auxes as audio files when exporting. This can be one track, all the tracks or any combination of the tracks done in one single bounce.

For example, if you select a music track, a VO track and an FX track, you will get all three tracks as three discrete individual audio files in one single bounce using Track Bounce. This is essential for anyone who has to make splits or stems, especially in long format.

Imagine you have an hour program where you have a music track, a VO track and a sound effect track. In the past, you had to bounce each element as one realtime bounce three separate times. That meant it would take over three hours to complete. With Track Bounce in the offline bounce mode, you can output your stems in one single step in just minutes.

One friendly reminder is that if you are using Track Bounce with any layered tracks, such as sound effects or music tracks, it will bounce each track as its own separate track rather than a mix of the specific layers. For example, selecting 10 tracks will result in 10 discreet audio files with one bounce so it is important to know when Track Bounce is useful for you and when it is not.

12. Included Plug-ins. Of course, Pro Tools 12 is all about the plug-ins, and there are more plug-ins included than ever. This includes First AIR Effects Bundle, Eleven Effects and Space. I find that I rarely use any third party plug-ins since I am often going from studio to studio on a single project. Outside of noise reduction and LKFS Metering, I rarely find the need to use anything other than Avid plug-ins that are included with Pro Tools 12.

Cloud Collaboration and Avid Everywhere
In the near future, Avid will be offering Cloud Collaboration and Avid Everywhere. Avid will finally offer the ability to work on Pro Tools remotely using media located on a central cloud server accessible anywhere there is Internet access. When introduced, Cloud Collaboration will allow people in separate locations to access the same Pro Tools 12 session to share and update files instantly. This is perfectly suited for musicians collaborating on a song who do not live near each other.

More exciting to me is the potential of Cloud Collaboration to change the way we work in audio post by allowing access to all of your media remotely. This could benefit any audio facility that has multiple rooms with multiple engineers switching from room to room. Using Cloud Collaboration, there will be one central location for all your media accessible from any audio room. For engineers who need to switch rooms when working on a project, this will eliminate any file transfers or media dumps.

But I think the biggest benefit will be for any audio engineer like myself who is often working on a single project at multiple locations over the duration of the project. I am often working from my home studio, my client’s studio and a large audio post facility on the same project spread over several days, weeks or months. Each time I change studios, I have to make sure I transfer all of my sessions from one place to another using a flash drive, or WeTransfer or Google Drive, etc. I have tried them all and they are all time consuming. And with multiple versions and constant audio revisions, it is very easy to lose track of what and where the most current version is.

Cloud Collaboration will solve this issue with one central location where I can access my session from anywhere that has Internet access. This is a giant leap forward and I am looking forward to exploring this in-depth in a future review here on postProspective.

Ron DiCesare is an audio pro whose spot work includes TV campaigns for Purina, NJ Lotto and Beggin’ Strips. His indie film work includes Con Artist, BAM 150 and Fishing without Nets. He is also involved with audio post for Vice Media on their news reports and web series, including Vice on HBO. You can contact him at rononizer@gmail.com.

As every editor and VFX artist knows, the toolset shouldn’t define you as an artist, however, in today’s visually intensive world any and all help is welcome in my eyes.

In addition to a couple of After Effects scripts like Newton 2, TypeMonkey, and any Trapcode plug-ins, there are two products that I feel are must-haves being an editor and working in VFX: Video CoPilot’s Element 3D and the Rampant Design Tools entire drag, drop, and go visual effects library.